John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the focus and motivation of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, in this area. I commend his incredible energy in addressing his portfolio.

This issue is worthy of interrogation. The Minister of State pointed out in his reply that the arrangements for SHDs apply for a limited period. One of the reasons I voted against the programme for Government was the inclusion of provision for SHDs, although Fianna Fáil has succeeded in ensuring the limited time extension will lapse on 31 December this year. The problem is that this time limit accelerated the rate of SHD activity. Developers know the scheme is coming to an end in December and have piled on the applications. Half of the permissions granted have not been acted on. If a developer gets planning permission via a SHD for 1,000 units, there is a huge increase in the value of the land to which the application pertains. The Minister of State said that permission has been given for more than 27,000 apartments. How many of them have been built? The number of planning permissions granted for apartments has tripled but, as I said, only half of the developments that were given permission since 2018 or 2019 have been built.

My concern is that the rents being charged on these apartments leave absolutely no saving room for those who rent them if they want to move on and buy their own homes. That is assuming they can afford the rent. In my constituency, people are looking at paying approximately €2,000 per month. In addition, as I keep saying, these apartments are being built adjacent to housing estates where young people have returned in droves to live in their family homes because they cannot afford current rents. As Killian Woods recently pointed out in the Business Post, vacant apartments in these new blocks will be left idle rather than let at a lower rate in order to protect the ongoing capital value of the entire development. We have seen the same thing happen with shopping centres and other commercial developments for a number of years. Rather than reduce the rents, the funds are leaving the apartments idle or, in some cases, as we are learning from Killian Woods, they are offering incentives for tenants to rent them.

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